Page 56 of Torment Me Knot
And then Sera.
The splinter in my chest is still there. I can't pretend otherwise. He might have had a good pack once, but I’ve never known anything other than pain at an alpha’s hands.
But Sera held me through my withdrawals. She kissed me too. Kev, Lex and Ezra have been kind to the point of annoying. And now… now I just don’t know.
They've been giving us space, bringing things to the threshold and leaving them there. Clothes. Food. Blankets. Always an offering, never a demand. Always asking with their actions if not their words.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the patience to crack. For one of them to decide they've waited long enough and it's time to collect what they're owed. It hasn't happened yet. That's the part that scares me more than violence would. Violence I understand. Violence I can prepare for. This patient, relentless kindness sits wrong in my chest, a splinter I can't dig out.
Something else is happening under the sticky perspiration and the soreness in my muscles. I want him closer. The shirt I'm wearing is one layer too many between us. I want it gone. I want water. I want his skin under my hands with nothing on it.
“We need to shower,” I say.
He laughs, small and broken and real. “Yeah. We really do. You smell like a wet raccoon.”
“You smell worse.” He doesn’t. If he didn’t shower for a year it wouldn’t bother me.
“I do not.”
“You do. You have fever-sweat in your hair, Aubrey.”
“Rude.”
“Honest.”
His mouth curves, ghosting into a smile. “Come on, let’s get us clean.”
He shoves the duvet off us and we both move off the floor like eighty year olds and make our way to the bathroom. Aubrey turns on the shower. Water hisses hot, steam rolling up at once, filling the small room.
Aubrey reaches for the hem of my shirt first.
“Okay?”
“More than okay.”
He lifts my shirt and drops it on the tile. His gaze tracks down my throat, over my collarbones, across my breasts. He doesn't hide what he's doing. He regards me like I'm the first good thing he's seen in years.
I reach for his shirt and peel it up his ribs, over his head, off his arms. His hair sticks up in the back. I don't smooth it down. His hands drop to the waistband of my sleep shorts. He pauses. Waiting.
“Yes.” My voice comes out thicker than I mean. “Take them off me, Aubrey.”
He hooks his thumbs under the elastic and slides them down my hips. His knuckles brush my thighs on the way down. He steps back enough for me to step out of them, and I do, and I'm standing in front of him dressed in nothing, and I don't want to hide.
I reach for him. The tie of his sleep pants comes undone easy. The fabric drops. He steps out of them and kicks them away.
We stand for a second, just looking. Steam curling around our ankles. Water pounding the tile behind him. He's beautiful. Thin and scarred and alive. He's mine. I'm his.
Aubrey pulls me under the water with a smile. The spray hits my shoulders, washing away the fever and grief, turning my skin pink. Cedar and chamomile bloom richer in the heat, mingling with my gardenia and clover until the whole bathroom smells like us. Only us.
“Your hair looks like something died in it,” Aubrey murmurs. “Several somethings. Possibly a whole ecosystem.”
I bump his shoulder with mine, enjoying this playful side of him. “Yours isn't exactly a shampoo commercial either.”
His mouth curves. He reaches for the shampoo, squeezes some into his palm, and holds it up for me to see. “Turn around and I’ll do you the favor of washing it.”
“Just... be gentle with the knots. There are a lot of them.”
“I noticed.” He gestures for me to turn. “Tell me if I pull too hard.”
